The visit was agreed under a landmark defence pact in April and comes amid rising tensions with Pyongyang.
  • TerryMathews@lemmy.world
    14·
    1 year ago

    So first off, I don’t like the headline. All US subs are nuclear, but this feels like burying the story: parking an SSBN at South Korea is a very specific message. It carries 20 Trident II missiles, each capable of carry 8 475kt warheads (but likely only armed with 4 due to treaty limitations).

    38 Megatons of independently targetable nuclear destruction.

    That said, the story also talks about how this will drive KJU from the table - as if he was ever there in the first place. Given the state of their current activities, I don’t think reminding him that he’s fucking around with a country that worked out nuclear delivery via ICBM half a century ago is overly aggressive.

    IMO, at some point, someone (and I’m not saying the US necessarily) is going to have to go in and depose the regime and integrate the population into modern society. North Korea is a bigger threat to world stability than Russia, and today that’s really saying something.

      • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
        9·
        1 year ago

        Russia may threaten and posture the use of nuclear weapons, and have started a losing war with their neighbor, but it’s far less likely that they would actually use the weapons. Even if Putin ordered it there’s a lot of people between him and the weapons that could prevent the use. He’s a dictator but barely, he needs to keep the oligarchs happy to keep his office, and the oligarchs don’t want to live out the rest of their lives in cramped bunkers in Siberia when the earth is irradiated. DPRK on the other hand is an actual dictatorship, with few people between Kim and a launch, and is actually unstable enough to do it. Also, with their carelessness around their “test launches” they’re much more likely to cause an international incident by dropping a half-fueled rocket stage on Japan.

        • TerryMathews@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          At this point with Russia I’m more concerned with them causing an Ukrainian nuclear power plant to melt down.

          • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            Didn’t the plants all get safely shut down before the Russians got there? If so, they can’t cause a meltdown unless they actually try to start the reactors.

            Not to say they can’t cause something bad to happen, especially since they are storing munitions in there but it wouldn’t be a meltdown. I would assume fuel material wouldn’t get thrown as far/the core wouldn’t be compromised but that would take someone more knowledgable than me on this.

            • TerryMathews@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              Didn’t the plants all get safely shut down before the Russians got there? If so, they can’t cause a meltdown unless they actually try to start the reactors.

              Are the shutdown? Yes. Safely? Definitely not. The type of reactor they are and the fuel they use, requires active cooling as it remains hot for years.

              Zaporizhzhia is the plant in question, and it’s water supply is in jeopardy after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

              With the plant not in active operation, it’s unlikely we’d see an incident on the level of Chernobyl but it’s far from safe.

      • TerryMathews@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        How would you feel if you were a South Korean? Knowing that your brothers to the North want to kill or conquer you simply because they’re not happy with the half of the continent they chose because, ultimately, the US was a better development partner than Russia and China?